A while back I saw a question on the big R, and I thought it was interesting. In fact, it was a question I didn’t realize I had several years ago. If I had known to ask it, I would’ve saved myself about a year of frustration and some money.
The question the poster asked was “what are guitar teachers supposed to teach you?”
I think it was 6 years ago now, I decided to take a few guitar lessons. I’m mostly self taught, and I knew that I had gaps in what I know. Since I didn’t know anything about getting a teacher, I found someone pretty close to me that was cheaper than the rest, and I hired him.
When I got there, he handed me a notebook. He had a curriculum he used that he had made. But it was geared towards beginners, and that wasn’t me. So he asked me what I wanted to work on, and I wasn’t sure. So we spent a year, once every couple of weeks, working on pretty much whatever came to mind at the moment. Which ended up being unfocused and really hit or miss.
Granted, over the course of the year, I can’t say that I really learned much new, but by the time we ghosted each other, a couple of the things he showed me helped to cement a couple of other things I already knew. They were kind of a-ha moments. “That’s why we do it that way” kind of things.
Fast forward a couple of years and someone I knew that is a killer player (and also a really good teacher) moved to the other side of the Metroplex from another state. So I decided to give some lessons a try.
First lesson we had he asked me that question. “What would you like to learn?” I hadn’t really thought about it. Just like with the previous guy, my thought was that there was some magical curriculum that a teacher would pull out and use. So that first lesson, we talked a lot, he showed me a couple of cool blues licks, and I went home to think about what I wanted to learn.
Before I left, he told me to come up with a concept on which I wanted to focus for the next few lessons. Don’t be general and say “I want to learn to play the blues.” I could kind of already do that, and that concept was a little broad because the blues is so big. He said, also, if I’d like to learn a song, that was fine, but it was too specific, and it was something I could probably do on my own. Instead, he said to come up with a concept that we could look at. He gave a couple of examples. One was to get to the point that I could get up and play at a blues jam. Or learn when and where to play in a specific mode. Both of those are a little more specific without being so broad as to be meaningless.
So that’s what I did. I think the concept that I gave him was to learn to incorporate some outside kinds of sounds into my playing. So that’s what we worked on for the next year or so that I made the drive over to see him. Not only did I learn some cool concepts and things I could add to my playing, but I also learned about some cool players I hadn’t listened to before that.
And I think that’s the role of a good teacher. If you’re brand new to a subject, they’ll have a curriculum to get you started. They’ll get you on your way. If you’re beyond the basics, they may see some of your deficiencies and work on those, but, as often as that, they take what interests you, and then they teach you what you need to be able to get there. And, often, what you need to get there may be just be a push in the right direction and an availability to answer questions when you have them.
I’m not knocking that first teacher. He was a good guy. I, also, think he was fairly new as a teacher. He was a good player, but I just don’t think he had taught long enough to know what to do when the student wasn’t sure where they wanted to go. I think he was, also, still trying things out to see what worked and what didn’t. I sometimes thought that he was trying to stay ahead of me. Like I’d ask a question this week, and he’d google the answer at some point before the next lesson.
The second one had been teaching for years, and he had seen enough students at all levels that he knew what worked, what didn’t, and how to easily pivot when I threw him a curve. He has, also, played for long enough at a high enough level that he always knew the answer.
Teachers come in all shapes and sizes and skill levels. The key is finding the one that works for your method of learning and making sure that they can get you where you want to go. The key is, you’ve gotta know where you want to go first. As we learned from that snarky 8th grade teacher and I was reminded with that first teacher, if you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll get there faster than you realize.